Interview with the Youtuber Richard Delamore aka Evildea

Today, our interview is with Evidea, famous Youtuber that divulges the Esperanto language. In addition, he is an actor and public speaker. You can find him on his YouTube channel, Twitter and Facebook.

Tell us a little about yourself

My online name is Evildea but my real name is Richard Delamore. I’m an Australian-Esperanto YouTuber, actor and public speaker. In vlog, I do skits, games, and present the newest happenings from the Esperanto community in Esperanto. All my recent videos are subtitled to English.

What languages do you speak and at what level?

I speak English and Esperanto fluently, however I’m also conversational in Mandarin. I took part in my first Mandarin-speaking competition only three weeks ago but I didn’t win. I’ve played with many other languages, but I’m unable to converse in any of them.

Why do you think people should learn Esperanto?

I studied Japanese for four years in school and even stayed in Japan for two weeks. Later in life, I studied French for six months. Today, I have forgotten every aspect of these two languages – I gave up because they were simply too hard. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how they functioned; how each individual part worked together. Esperanto changed this for me. It first taught me grammar. I already knew the basics, but Esperanto’s regular endings and logical affixes visualized it for me. Within one hour of studying, I was able to form more complex sentences than four years of Japanese. It’s been six years since that moment and I can now confidently say I can match any native speaker. This gave me the confidence and knowledge to attempt “harder” languages such as Mandarin Chinese. Some of my friends have called me talented with regards to languages, but realistically I simply had the good fortune of stumbling across Esperanto during my language journey.

So, one of the most obvious reasons you should learn Esperanto is to help you learn languages in general. There are many other reasons to learn Esperanto, but I won’t cover them all here.

Do you think Esperanto can become a lingua franca?

It takes hundreds of years for languages to become lingua francas. Esperanto is 120+ years old so it still has a long journey ahead of it. Despite this, it’s already playing the role of a lingua franca on a smaller scale in my life. For instance, I’ve travelled the world, made friends and worked through Esperanto. My entire career is based around and within the Esperanto community. So even if it doesn’t become a lingua franca during my life, it will certainly become a more powerful language economically and socially. I like to compare it to the metric system, which was invented in 1799 and still hasn’t been fully adopted.

How often do you use Esperanto?

Everyday. I listen to music, read books, watch YouTube channels, troll my friends and of course run a YouTube channel. I like to also meetup with friends (Esperanto speakers) and just talk about what’s new. I regularly take part in my local Esperanto group and I’m also on the board of the Sydney Language Festival (half the board members are Esperanto speakers). So, it’s an everyday language for me. Some days I use it more than English.

Which materials and methods do you use? Also, what is right know the best resource to learn Esperanto?

I don’t study Esperanto any more. I just read and talk with friends. When I started studying Esperanto, the resources were severely limited. I used mainly books, the website lernu.net and a few random grammar guides. However, in the past year everything has changed, Esperanto has exploded in popularity and you can now find any number of courses. The most popular course right now is the Esperanto Duolingo course for English speakers, which has over 400,000 learners and will soon be available in Spanish. So, it really depends on your learning style. I’ve made a number of videos on my channel in English on how I learned Esperanto is depth.

How I became fluent in Esperanto

How to speak Esperanto naturally

Since you’re an actor and love films, is there any movies in Esperanto you can recommend?

Large-scale movie productions require budgets to match so the Esperanto community is full of mainly independent films and dubs. My favourite films (dubbed into Esperanto) are those of Christopher Mihm. Every time I watch them, I can’t stop laughing. They’re basically modern homages to the over-the-top black and whites from the 60s. My absolute favourite is Attack of the Moon Zombies – the title says it all.

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English is not my native language, if you find some error, please send me a message. Many thanks.